Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-05-02
Two COMMON Sins.
Two Important Questions What Books
Shall We Read and What Pic
lures Shall We Look At.
One Of the Crying Wants Of the Cities
OF this Country is Great Bonfire
of Bad Literature.
The Printing Press to be one of the Chief
Means for the Worlds Rescue and
EvangeiizatiOn.
Special to the Gazette.

BROOKLYN, N. Y, May AT the
Tabernacle this morning, the pastor, the
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, DID,, ex-
pounded some of the proverbs Of Solo
mon. The congregation sang with mag
nifcent effect, the hymn beginning:
Arm of the Lord, awake awake
Put on thy strength, the nations shake.
DR.. Tslmage took for his text, Acts
xix, 10: "Msny of them also which used
curious arts brought their books together
and burned them before all men: and they
counted the price of them and found it
$4,000 pieces of silver.'
Paul had been stirring up Ephesus with
some lively sermons about the sins of
that place. Among the more imp 1rtant
results was the fact that the citizens
brought out their bad books, and in g
public place made bonfire of them. I
see the people coming out with their
arms full of Ephesian literature, and
tossing it into the flames. l hear an
economist standing by and saying: "Stop
this waste. Here are $500 worth of
bOOks-do you propose to burn them all
up? II you don't want to read them
yourselves, sell them, and let somebody
else read them" "No," said the people,
'if these books are not good for US, they
are not good for anybody else, and we
shall stand and watch until the last leaf
has
TURNED TO ASHES.
They have done US world of harm, and
they shall never do others harm" Hear
the flames Crackle and roar!
Well, my friends, one of the wants
Of the cities of this country is
10
and newspapers. We have enough fuel
to make 8 blaze 200 feet high. MANY of
the publishing houses would do well to
throw into the blaze their entire stock of
goods. Bring forth tn iIsufferable
trash, and put it into the fire, and let
it be known, in the presence of God, and
angels, and men, that you are going to
rid your homes of the overlapping and
underlying curse of profigate literature.
The printing press is the mightIest
agency on earth for good and for evil
The minister of the Gospel, standing in
pulpit, has a responsible positions but
l do not think 1t is as responsible as the
position of an editor or a publisher. At
what distant point of time, at what far
out circle of eternity, will cease the in
huenCe of a Henry J. Raymond, or q
Horace Greeley; or q James Gordon Ben
nett, or Watson Webb, or an Erastus
Brooks, or q Thomas Kiusella? Take
the simple statistics that our New York
dailies now have a circulation of about
$50, 900 per day, and add to it the fact
- lat three Of our weekly periodicals have
IN aggregate circulation of about ,00O,-
000 and then cipher, if you can, how far
up, and how far down, and how far out,
reach the Influences of the American
printing press. Great God, what is to
be the issue of all this? l believe the
Lord intends the printing press to be the
chief means for the worlds rescue and
evangelizatlOn, and | think that the great
lsst battle OF the world will not be fought
with swords and guns, but
WITH TYPES AND PRESSES
purified and gospel literature triumph
ing over, tTampling down and crushing
out forever that which is depraved. The
only way to overcome unClean literature
is by scattering abroad that which is
heslthful. May God speed the cylinders
of an honest, intelligent, aggressive,
Christian printing press.
have to tell you this morning that the
greatest blessing that ever came to this
nation is that of an elevated literature,
and the greatest sCOurge has been that
of unClesn literature. This last has its
victims in all occupations and depart
ments. It has helped to fill insane asy
lums, and penitentiaries, and almshOuses,
and dens of shame. The bodies of this
Infection lie in the hospitals and in the
graves, while their souls are being tossed
over into a lost eternity, an avalanche Of
horror and despair!
The London plague was nothing to it.
EoI 1NvrF hon Dc
but this modern pest has already SHOW
eIled it's millions into the charnel-house
of the morally dead. The longest rail
train that ever ran over the Z lie or Hud-
son tracks was not long enough or large
enough to carry the beastlinesS and the
putrefaction which has been gathered up
in Dad books and newspapers of this land
In the last twenty years.
Now, it is amid such circum-
stances that 1 put, this morning, ques-
ton of overmastering-impor to you
and your families. What books and news
papers shall we read? You see group
them together. A newspaper is only
book in 8 sWifter and more portable
shape, and the same rules which will ap-
ply to book reading will apply to news
paper reading. What shall we read2
Shall our minds be the receptacle OF
everything that an author has mind TO
writer Shall there be no distinction be-
tween the tree of life and the tree of
death? Shall we stOop down and drink
out of the trough which the wickedness
of men has filed with pollution and
shame? Shall we mire in impurity, and
chase fantastic wilI-o'- the-wisps across
the swamps, when we might walk in the
blooming gardens of God? o no!
For the sake of our present and
everlasting welfare we must make
AN INTELLIGENT AND CHRISTIAN CHOICE.
Standing as we do, chin deep in fctl-
tious literature the first question that
many Of the young people are asking me is:
"Shal we read noyels?" reply: There
are novels that are pure, good, Christian,
eleyating TO the heart and ennObling TO
the life, But Ihsve still further to say that
l believe that ninety-nine out of the 100
novels in this day are baIeful and destruC-
tive 20 the last degree. pure work of